Living in the Bush Capital

A silent Sunday morning - with the birds

A week or so back, I was hanging the washing out on the line. It was a clear, sunny, early spring morning; chilly overnight around zero, but the sun doesn't take too long to bring a little warmth to the air when the sky is so clear.

It was great to just stand and enjoy the early morning sunshine and the ambient, peaceful sounds of the surrounding back-yard birds. Sparrows tweet, magpie chortles far and near, some parrots or galahs giving a bit of a squawk, pee-wits with something that sounds like "OK", the bell-like calls of the king parrots, the boring notes of a Koel.


 At that stage, even the two yappy neighbour dogs were quiet, though they would be on and off upsetting each other quite soon; but yaps are quieter than woofs!








When the sun gets a little higher, the currawongs start their raucous calls; they have many call-sets but their songs are not as melodic as those of the magpies.


Later, inside sitting at the computer with the window open, and the background "sounds of silence" continued.

Such a peaceful neighbourhood. Even a crow/raven "ark, ark" calling, and the squeaky doves are now up and about.

I am fortunate to llive in a suburb that was developed over 35 years ago. One of the many established garden suburbs. It takes quite a while for newly planted shrubs and ecualypts/gum trees to bring greenness to the harsh brick veneer landscape left after estate development. However, in the older suburbs "the bush" still rings true. Well-established shrubs are green giants and gum trees planted 20-30 years ago are now towering, swaying in the strong winds - though as I'm writing this on a gusty, grey morning, I'm reminded of their nasty habit of dropping twigs, bark and sometimes rather large branches!

New Shoes

OR - WHERE MY SHOES HAVE WALKED

I put on a brand new pair of shoes last week - right out of the box! Call them sneakers or trainers, or runners (don't do much of that these days). They do look very clean and smart. Looking at the "old" pair - quite shabby beside the out-of-box pair, but still very comfortable; well worn, still with good thick soles though fading and some ground in dirt of travels.

In early 2008, my daughter convinced me that I needed a decent pair of shoes for all the travelling and walking that I'd been doing, so she took me to a store that was having a half price or 2-for-1 sale of good quality sports-type shoes. The most comfortable fit at the time was Nike and they cost $139.99 - quite expensive for Scrooge-me to pay for a pair sneakers, but at the sale price, this was for 2 pairs - half price! So I put the box with the second pair towards the back of the wardrobe. Only once before had I paid so much for footwear - in 1994, I have on record that I paid $129 for "new tennis shoes". I had loved my Diadora white leather tennis shoes and started to wear them everywhere as sneakers when I stopped playing tennis - always realising that the expense was definitely worth it; I had nearly 14 years of comfort from them.

So, I looked at my worn shoes and thought back to some of the wonderful places they have trodden:

- Sydney, Melbourne, Bairnsdale and Mallacoota
- Cairns, and a walk along Cape Tribulation beach
- Tasmania - mainly in the north-west: Devonport, Queenstown, Strahan, Rosebery and even the 5.5kms rail trails track to Montezuma Falls.

[Hmmm . . . I don't seem to travel in Australia very much - perhaps these new shoes will see more of my own country]

Overseas wonders have been short glimpses of the pavements of Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, southern China at Sanya, Malaysia (Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, and Kuala Lumpur); then stepping across the Indian Ocean to walk on the islands of Mauritius, Madagascar, Seychelles and Reunion; over to Europe to walk the cobblestones of some wonderful places along the Danube, Main and Rhine Rivers passing through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Germany; then Amsterdam (beside the canals).

I have happy memories (and many photographs) of these great places - some nearly a day's travel from east coast Australia.

First steps, first trip - out the back door and walk to the car.

I wonder what exciting pavements these shoes will tread?

Back to Sunday again

Where has the week gone? I still haven't achieved very much, though I did tidy up a few files on that other computer. Also added some more! Tried to work my way through a few of the blog page design elements today - have added a link to a daily cartoon - need some clever, light relief!

Purchased my very first e-book yesterday. Not that I have one of those specialised e-book readers - I've put it on to my small notebook computer & will read it from that screen, which, even though quite small, is probably 10 times the size of a Kindle or Kobo screen. One of my favourite travel-humour authors, Brian Thacker - his latest book is: Tell Them to Get Lost

Still trying (very)

Reading another blog this morning & the challenge was to use the spring weather to do some spring cleaning - on anything! I can write marvellous to-do lists of what I need to do, but I spend more time adding to the list than crossing off what I've achieved! Today is/was the day that I was going to clean junk (and other) files of my laptop computer. Ha! Have spent a lot of time looking at the photos, listening to the music, playing the videos (actually didn't play any games on it, but haven't closed it down yet!) but so far, I haven't deleted a thing! Also managed to fill in some time looking out some flash drives to use as a back-up for any deleted photos - NOTHING ACHIEVED!

Perhaps I'm just up the creek without a paddle!

First day

As usual, something new & I'm all at sea - wish I really was!

More later when I've done more research, gathered more information.